


Midnight

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-06
Updated: 2004-10-06
Packaged: 2018-11-20 17:12:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11339799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Coming home.





	Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

Midnight

### Midnight

#### by Nicholas

  


Title: Midnight  
Author: Nicholas 

E-Mail: 

Pairing: M/K   
Category: Placed at the end of the story for spoiler reasons Rating: R 

Disclaimer: Fox Mulder, Alex Krycek and the other X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20th Century FOX Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use. 

Notes: Scout posted the poem by Emily Dickinson somewhere and asked nicely whether anyone felt like using it for a story. Neither her nor I imagined something like 'Midnight' to rise to the surface. Beta'd by Gaby. Thank you. 

Warning: Very dark. Extremely dark story. Proceed at your own risk. 

* 

"Good Morning Midnight"   
(Emily Dickinson) 

Good Morning -- Midnight --   
I'm coming Home --   
Day -- got tired of Me --  
How could I -- of Him? 

Sunshine was a sweet place --  
I liked to stay --   
But Morn -- didn't want me -- now --   
So -- Goodnight -- Day! 

I can look -- can't I --  
When the East is Red?   
The Hills -- have a way -- then --   
That puts the Heart -- abroad -- 

You -- are not so fair -- Midnight --   
I chose -- Day --   
But -- please take a little Girl --   
He turned away! 

\-- 

I lose myself in the night, lose myself in the darkness. The shadows offer more protection than the night ever could. The first thin line of grayish light appears on the horizon and I walk towards it, step by step, one foot in front of the other, my eyes on the impending day. The last day of the world as we know it. 

I have left his room, left the house, left him on his bed. The fever in his eyes, the fire within him. I touched his lips with mine one final time, brushed those eyelids close and with a last lingering look left him there. There were no tears. Not on my face, and not on his. We are past the tears, past the pain and anguish, past the fear. Years of fighting do that to you, they make you cold inside. When we first met again it was him who came up with the dry, flippant remark of ice chips filling up both of us. The ice never completely melted. The days were too cold, the wind too sharp, the dangers too great. We could not afford that risk, could not afford that insanity. Behind closed doors, in the middle of the night, there were times when I felt the warmth of his breath on my face, the heat of his stare, and my skin prickled with the new sensations. Moments of warmth in a cold world. 

We had both seen too much to deny knowledge, done too many gruesome things to avoid the consequences. He had never been a fighter, not like me. This world turned him into one and he had to cave in, accept this turn of fate as his due, and had to adapt to the coming storms. It drained all energy out of him. Both of us knew he would not make it any further than this. He had fought his share, and the world had stolen his last breath. 

I huddle further into my jacket as I undertake the long walk, my eyes fixed steadily on the new light, millions of years old. My thoughts are with him. His eyes, telling me to fight. To fight for him, for us, for our world. It is the look I had given him after her death. 'Stand up, go on'. A mantra during the months spent in the desert heat and arctic cold. Knowledge put us into the responsibility and who would we have been to close our eyes to our duty. He breathed his last breath for them, and now the last minutes are mine alone to spend. 

I do not look back. I know that I could still imagine his window in the darkness behind me, but a look back now would mean a step back. I would run as fast as I can to be by his side, to lay my head into his lap, close my eyes and wait for the roaring sounds, wait for the screams and cries, the bursting windows and collapsing walls. 

We were the only ones left. The only ones with the pieces of the puzzle, the scraps of knowledge in our hands. The rest of them, falling prey to the temptation of personal survival or dying in the fight alongside with us. Scully, Skinner, Doggett, Reyes, our families, friends, leaving the two of us as the lone warriors against an army, against an enemy we did not know, a quality of war we had never experienced. He learned to kill, and not to mourn the loss of lives and souls. 

We stepped over bodies, over fields of dying people. Their hands lifted from their blackened, burned forms. They gripped our legs and feet, trying to draw us down and begged us for water, for food, for clothes, for humanity. Thousands of arms lifting into the air as one final cry for survival in a sea of bodies. The tears wet his face as he looked into their eyes and knew that there was nothing he could do, nothing either of us could do for them. He heard the bones break beneath our boots and shivered with every new snapping sound. We had to lie among these survivors for long hours, wait for another patrol to pass over our heads, smell the burned flesh, and feel the life leaving those around us. We had to look into their eyes as the flame of life left them and we had to get up and move further along. 

He hardened. And the ice chips shell grew stronger with every body we encountered, stronger with every aim-to-kill shoot leaving his gun. We had to hang onto this thread of hope, a lone thread dangling tantalizingly in the air in front of us. If we could not manage it, no-one would. It made us get up again. It kept us running when all our resources had run dry. It made us crawl into dark caves when our bodies were straining to remain on the open fields and allow the next wave of fire to take the pain from us. 

'We are survivors,' he told me dryly one night. We were hearing the explosions, felt them rock the ground beneath our bodies. I was spooned behind him, he allowed me to hold him. It was the most either of us could give. 'Promise me you will go on, Alex. Once I am gone, promise me you will keep going until there's no ground to walk on anymore,' he whispered into the darkness. I nodded and he sighed. I don't know if he even felt my nod, but he fell asleep in my arms that night. 

We knew that we didn't stand a chance. But could we dig our own grave and give up with the knowledge that just maybe there would have been a way to prevent this from happening? We found each other in that thought and we saw it in the other's eyes. To fight, until there is nothing left to fight for. To run, until there is nothing left to run for. To breathe, until there is nothing left to breathe for. 

I felt him dying. It was eating him from within. Physically, mentally. He was devoured by his demons, haunted by those he had seen on the fields, in the houses, those we encountered on our paths. He wanted me to leave him in the wilderness, arguing that I didn't stand a chance with his dead weight clinging to my side. I ignored his protest and dragged him along, trying to keep my heart from breaking at the loss of strength on his face, the loss of determination, the pure inability to go any further. 

I brought him home, and stayed by his side, looked into those eyes and lay with him. I told him about my life, about the dreams I had had as a child, the stories you should share in front of a fireplace in a peaceful world. I talked long after he had grown mute, staring into nothing. I had to believe that he was still able to hear me, to feel me, so I cradled him to myself and talked, and laughed, and cried. 

Until today when he just stopped breathing. No final words, no great confessions as you'd expect in a life, in a fantasy other than this. I closed his eyes for him, and left with that last kiss to keep my promise and continue until there was nowhere to go anymore. 

The horizon is growing brighter, a new day, to be celebrated as another life. One foot right in front of the other, and his still body on a bed in a room in a house in the darkness right behind me. To run, until there is nothing left to run for. 

I feel the rumble of the ground before I hear the sound in the air. I keep walking. A vast field stretches out around me. The path I am walking is the path made only for me. It leads right to the horizon. The movement beneath my feet grows stronger, almost making me stumble and fall, keeping me off-balance, keeping me unbalanced. 

I don't even feel the heat on my back until I see the flames dancing over my body, and them passing above my head. The heat spreads over my body but the ice does not melt. I keep walking - my eyes on the horizon, step by step -, crawling, when my legs buckle. Finally my eyes close. I'm coming Home. 

\-- 

Category: Angst, Post-Colonization, Character Death, Genocide   
  

If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Nicholas


End file.
